UNITED NATIONS - President Bush said yesterday he intends to nominate an ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues, after weeks of speculation that his administration might reduce the Clinton administration's commitment to international institutions of justice.

Pierre-Richard Prosper, a former prosecutor with the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, was Bush's choice for the post within the US State Department, the White House said yesterday.

"I am honored to be under consideration," said Prosper, 37, who now serves as a special counsel in the war crimes office.

In January, US Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was said to be leaning toward abolishing the war crimes bureau, a top priority of his predecessor, Madeleine Albright. Albright, who played a pivotal role in creating the two war crimes tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda while acting as ambassador to the United Nations, had created the office to ensure attention was paid to war crimes issues.

David Scheffer, an Albright aide, played a key role in ensuring the tribunals were adequately funded and that crucial intelligence needed for indictments reached prosecutors. Powell earlier this year had said such duties could be overseen by other parts of the State Department, State Department aides had said.

Yesterday's announcement appears to indicate a change of heart, advocates say. "It's a very positive signal from the new administration," said Nina Bang-Jensen, of the Coalition for International Justice in Washington, DC, a watchdog group on issues of international justice.

The announcement comes at crucial time for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Serbia has until March 31 to hand over former leader Slobodan Milosevic to the war crimes tribunal in the Hague or face losing American aid. The Bush administration must also wrestle with what to do about a treaty creating an international criminal court.

Prosper, while at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, oversaw the prosecution of the case of Jean-Paul Akayesu, the first official ever to be convicted for genocide. The case, which focused on the killings and rapes in a Rwandan village, made legal history as the first in which judges ruled that rape was a crime against humanity and an act of genocide.

Prosper, the son of Haitian doctors living in upstate New York, is a graduate of Boston College and the Pepperdine School of Law.